*. Photograph by A. R. Moore 



A CALIFORNIA SEQUOIA WASHINGTONIANA LOG, 26 FEET IN DIAMETER 



A thousand years scarcely serve to bring a sequoia to its maturity, and it may be hale 

 and hearty still when three thousand summer suns have looked down upon it; but a day 

 may lay it low forever. 



into lime for agricultural purposes, and 

 even the Pyramids have served as quar- 

 ries to the indifferent successors of those 

 who raised them. 



Yet when unnumbered thousands of 

 Egyptian slaves were laboriously trans- 

 porting the stones for Cheops across the 

 Nile Valley and hoisting them into posi- 

 tion, these hoary old veterans of the Cali- 

 fornia mountains were sturdy saplings. 



The human progress they must have 

 witnessed ! In their early youth the chil- 

 dren of Israel were wandering through 

 the Wilderness of Sin. When the Star of 

 Bethlehem shone down over that lowly 

 manger in Judea, proclaiming the second 

 deliverance of mankind, who knows but 

 that these monarchs of the California 

 forest which have just been rescued from 

 the woodman's axe joined in singing 

 "'Glory to the Highest," as the winds of 

 the East swept over the West ! 



The very race that has risen up to save 

 them was perhaps overrunning Europe, 

 wrapped in skins, living by the chase, and 



using the bow and arrow, when they were 

 taking root. Instead of medicine, men 

 were resorting to amulets and charms. 

 The most complicated piece of machinery 

 that had yet been invented was the hand- 

 loom. There was not a screw, a bolt, or a 

 nut in existence. There was no printing 

 press, no steam-engine, no microscope, no 

 telescope, no telegraph, no telephone. 

 The tallow dip was the only method of 

 lighting ; the caravan, the sail and row 

 boat, and the runner were the only means 

 of international communication. 



As a hunter keeps a record of the bears 

 he has killed by the notches in his gun- 

 stock, so the big tree keeps an account of 

 the years it has lived by rings concealed 

 within its trunk. Every year that it lives 

 it grows in girth a tiny bit — in youth 

 faster, in age slower, in fat years more 

 and in lean ones less. But it never fails 

 to add its ring with each passing year. 

 Examine the next pine stump you come 

 to and you will see how these rings start 

 out from the center like those on the 



